The invention relates generally to the field of operating system design, and, more specifically, to the field of file object namespaces.
The world wide web (xe2x80x9cthe webxe2x80x9d) is a very large body of information maintained on thousands of computer systems connected by the Internet. The web is organized into millions of documents called web pages. A group of related web pages produced and maintained by the same person or organization is known as a xe2x80x9cweb site.xe2x80x9d
A user typically interacts with the web using an application program known as a web browser or web client executing on the user""s computer system, or the xe2x80x9cclientxe2x80x9d computer system. Each web page may be independently accessed by providing a reference to the web page, called a xe2x80x9cURL,xe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cuniform resource locator,xe2x80x9d to the web browser application. The web browser application uses the URL to retrieve the contents of the web page via the Internet, then displays those contents in a window displayed by the web browser application. Web page contents can include data such as text, still images, and audio and video clips; programs executable on the client machine; and links to related web pages.
Conventional web browsers operate in a manner completely distinct from the filesystem viewers typically provided by operating systems and user interface shells. For example, FIG. 1 is a screen diagram showing a window displayed by a filesystem viewer application called the Windows Explorer provided with a Microsoft(copyright) Windows(copyright) 95 operating system and user interface shell. The window 100 contains a subwindow 110 whose contents describe the contents of a filesystem directory. The contents of the subwindow show that the current directory contains two file folders, xe2x80x9cDriversxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cIcuxe2x80x9d, as well as an MS-DOS Application xe2x80x9cReadmexe2x80x9d and a Text Document xe2x80x9cReadmexe2x80x9d. The user may further use the filesystem viewer application to issue commands to manipulate the contents of the displayed directory, such as commands to move, rename, delete, or launch files in the directory and create new folders or files in the directory.
In contrast, FIG. 2 shows the contents of the same directory displayed by a conventional web browser application. Window 201 is displayed by the conventional web browser application, and contains subwindow 220. It can be seen that the contents of this subwindow have a significantly different visual appearance from the contents of subwindow 110 (FIG. 1). For example, the subwindow displayed by the web browser uses icons, such as icons 221 and 222, that differ from the icons used by the file viewer application, such as icons 111 and 112. The web browser application further uses different labels to characterize the types of each object contained in the directory, 225F-228 than the labels used by the filesystem viewer, 115-118 (FIG. 1). Finally, the web browser displays different file sizes, 223 and 224 than the filesystem viewer, 113 and 114 (FIG. 1), for the same objects. Even further, the web browser displays a directory label 229 and a parent directory link 230 not displayed by the file viewer application. Additionally, the web browser application does not allow the user to issue commands to manipulate the contents of the displayed directory. Such differences in the operation of the web browser to display the contents of a filesystem directory from the filesystem viewer make it difficult for a user to use both applications.
Further, Internet addresses, such as those used in URLs to identify web pages, are completely distinct from the shell hierarchy used in most user interface shells and operating systems to represent the contents of a local filesystem, as well as other resources available from or through the user""s computer system. The emission of these addresses from the hierarchy makes it difficult for users to switch back and forth between objects stored in the hierarchy and objects stored at Internet addresses.
The present invention is directed to integrating web addresses into a shell hierarchy of resources including the local filesystem, so that both web addresses and local filesystem locations can be specified as locations within the shell hierarchy. A unified web/filesystem browser application displays the shell hierarchy including both web addresses and local filesystem locations. When the user selects an item in the displayed shell hierarchy, the type of the selected item is used to select from the registry a file viewer module for displaying the selected item, whether the item is a word processing document, a filesystem directory, a web page, or a document of another type. In a further embodiment of the invention, a web browser that itself displays web pages is adapted to display the contents of a folder by calling the same code for displaying the contents of a folder as a dedicated application, provided by the user interface shell, for viewing directory contents.